The Russia/Ukraine War Thread

[SilentSam]

 

 

[SilentSam]

 

 

[SilentSam]

 

 

[SilentSam]

 

 

[SilentSam]

So very true :

 

 

 

 

[SilentSam]

To add to my last post:

 

 

 

 

[SilentSam]

 

 

[SilentSam]

 

 

 

[King Heffy]

29 minutes ago, SilentSam said:

 

 

These sound pretty underwhelming in the article.  I'd want to be sure that they weren't just donating rolling coffins to the Ukrainians.

[Yoshiyoshi]

5 minutes ago, King Heffy said:

These sound pretty underwhelming in the article.  I'd want to be sure that they weren't just donating rolling coffins to the Ukrainians.

at the very least they could be used as decoys to attract missiles or something

[SilentSam]

Trading Counts !..

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[SilentSam]

Two years ago, the Mesquite site was just a dirt lot. Thanks to a $500 million investment from the Ukraine Supplementals, there will be 350 new jobs here, producing 155mm metal shell bodies, just 10 months after breaking ground.

This plant has a unique model. While nominally a contractor owned, contractor operated (COCO) facility, the Army owns the capital equipment and will lease it back to GD-OTS. 

The plant has 3 buildings and will have 1 production line in each, which, when fully completed and operational next year, will produce 30,000 shell bodies per month. 

The first line is just being completed, but workers from Turkish firm Repkon are already working on setting up the second line. A technology called flow forming will be used here to produce the shell bodies. It's much faster than the legacy processes used as GD-OTS' Pennsylvania facilities. 

Once completed, the shell bodies will  be shipped to either the Iowa Army Ammunition Plant (which will soon open an additional production line), or to Day & Zimmermann's new 155mm facility on the former Kansas Army Ammunition Plant, to be filled with explosives (Load, Assemble & Pack). 

Next year GD-OTS will open their own 155mm LAP facility in Camden, Arkansas. They are on contract to establish facilitization for 20,000 rounds of M795s and 30,000 rounds of the new M1128 per month. That will be half of the targeted 100,000/month capacity the Army is targeting for the end of 2025. 

These additional details via NYT (link in alt text), Reuters & GD-OTS.
 

 

 

[RU SERIOUS]

New Russian "Turbo" Tank (2024 model)....(comes with an ashtray too!)  

 

Edited May 30 by RU SERIOUS

[Honky Cat]

 

[Honky Cat]

 

[SilentSam]

 

 

[SilentSam]

This is a very good sign ..

 

 

[SilentSam]

If this was the other way around,.  We’d be witnessing a torture chamber or butcher shop.,

 

 

 

[SilentSam]

FYI:

 

Unanimous ..

 

Trump 
.. found Guilty on ALL 34 COUNTS OF FELONY CRIMES.
 

[SilentSam]

 

https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/30/politics/biden-gives-ukraine-permission-to-expand-strikes-within-russia-using-us-weapons?cid=ios_app
 

 

[SilentSam]

 

of course it’s tounge in cheek lol

 

but there are many unconfirmed strikes in RuZ over the past 24 hrs .

 

see what surfaces as the Sun Rises .

[Yoshiyoshi]

43 minutes ago, SilentSam said:

 

https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/30/politics/biden-gives-ukraine-permission-to-expand-strikes-within-russia-using-us-weapons?cid=ios_app
 

 

its a start, all the restrictions need to be lifted and Ukraine should start taking territory in Russia instead of only fighting in their own country. It's ridiculous that Russia can operate in their own country with impunity, time to make them have to worry about their entire border.

[Gurn]

1 minute ago, Yoshiyoshi said:

its a start, all the restrictions need to be lifted and Ukraine should start taking territory in Russia instead of only fighting in their own country. It's ridiculous that Russia can operate in their own country with impunity, time to make them have to worry about their entire border.

part of any peace agreement must have Ukraine with a different physical border with Russia, imo.

It doesn't have to be way into Russia, but rather strategically placed to make any future invasion very, very difficult.

Rivers, mountains, and gorges, along with lakes should be used as much as possible.

Also a zone established on the Russian side of the new border where they can't have any military equipment.

 

Just a small part of what needs to be done, when this is over.

[Yoshiyoshi]

3 minutes ago, Gurn said:

part of any peace agreement must have Ukraine with a different physical border with Russia, imo.

It doesn't have to be way into Russia, but rather strategically placed to make any future invasion very, very difficult.

Rivers, mountains, and gorges, along with lakes should be used as much as possible.

Also a zone established on the Russian side of the new border where they can't have any military equipment.

 

Just a small part of what needs to be done, when this is over.

my thought is more of allowing Ukraine more control over where they fight. If they cant break through the Russian lines in occupied territory they can go around them to the north and hit them from behind. If Ukraine had this freedom to operate when their counter offensive stalled last year maybe they would have been able to take more territory rather than having to focus on depleting Russian combat power because they couldn't do anything else. Russia has been allowed so many advantages in this war because of lines on a map.

 

But I agree that they should redraw their border and take any position that is advantageous to their defense.

[Canuck Surfer]

12 hours ago, SilentSam said:

 

https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/30/politics/biden-gives-ukraine-permission-to-expand-strikes-within-russia-using-us-weapons?cid=ios_app
 

 

 

Volodymyr Zelenskiy: Russian troops are laughing at and ‘hunting’ Ukrainians

 

Joe Biden’s delay in sanctioning the use of western weapons against targets in Russia has left the Kremlin’s forces laughing at Ukraine and able to “hunt” its people, Volodymyr Zelenskiy has told the Guardian.

In a wide-ranging interview in Kyiv, the Ukrainian president said that the White House’s equivocation had cost lives and he urged the US president to overcome his perennial worries about possible nuclear “escalation” with Moscow.

 

On Thursday night it emerged that, after months of lobbying, the US had taken a small but symbolic step – and for the first time would permit some American made weapons to be used by Kyiv’s military to fire inside Russia in its defence of the city of Kharkiv.

But in his Guardian interview, Zelenskiy made clear he needs to be able to use “powerful” long range weapons that can hit targets inside deep Russian territory – a red line the White House has refused to lift.

 

The US, he said, needed to “believe in us more”.

 

Without this green light, Zelenskiy said other allies, such as the UK, may not allow Ukraine to use their long range weapons either. “Believe us, we have to respond. They don’t understand anything but force. We are not the first and not the last target,” he said of Russia.

 

“I think it is absolutely illogical to have [western] weapons and see the murderers, terrorists, who are killing us from the Russian side. I think sometimes they are just laughing at this situation,” he said. “It’s like going hunting for them. Hunting for people. They understand that we can see them, but we cannot reach them.”

 

Zelenskiy also said:

• New US weapons had still not arrived in sufficient quantities to equip additional Ukrainian brigades in the north-east, where Russia is advancing.

• Vladimir Putin was similar to Adolf Hitler, saying: “Putin is not crazy. He’s dangerous, which is much scarier.”

• He had asked the former British prime minister Boris Johnson to lobby Donald Trump in the run-up to a vote in the US Congress in April to approve $61bn in aid to Ukraine, which hard-right Republicans had opposed.

• The UK Labour leader, Keir Starmer, whom he met in Kyiv last year, was a “good guy”. He added, after a pause: “Rishi [Sunak] is also a good guy.”

Zelenskiy’s remarks came as the Biden administration on Thursday relaxed its long-standing policy forbidding Ukraine from using US weapons against targets inside Russia. It gave permission for Ukraine to fire back – but only near Kharkiv, where Moscow has been waging a fresh offensive.

 

The decision allows Ukraine to use US-supplied Himars artillery to strike Russian soldiers and command and control centres. Zelenskiy’s press spokesperson, Serhii Nykyforov, welcomed the US move. He told the Guardian: “It will significantly boost our ability to counter Russian attempts to mass across the border.”

 

But the White House insisted its policy prohibiting deeper strikes had not changed. Ukraine would still not be able to use the long-range Atacms system within Russia, it clarified.

 

Speaking inside his presidential headquarters, Zelenskiy made clear he wanted to use long-range weapons such as the UK-made Storm Shadow missiles.

He said that, despite reports to the contrary, the UK has not given “100% permission” to do so. Thursday’s shift is unlikely to change the position either.

In reality, Downing Street waits on the Americans, Zelenskiy suggested. “We raised this issue twice. We did not get confirmation from him [David Cameron, the foreign secretary],” he explained.

 

A final decision by the UK and other partners depended on “consensus”, with the position in Washington being crucial, he suggested. “You know how it works,” he said.

Biden has long been concerned about the risks of a direct nuclear conflict with Moscow.

The US president is likely to skip a peace summit in Switzerland next month, which Zelenskiy has organised. Asked if he felt let down by the US and its leadership, he replied: “I think they need to believe in us more.”

Ten countries had indicated support for the scrapping of “red lines”. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, indicated his backing on Wednesday, saying Ukraine could use long-range French Scalp missiles against hostile Russian military sites.

In the past week Russia has used guided bombs to kill at least 25 civilians in Kharkiv.

Yet Ukraine has not been allowed to fire into Russia, Zelenskiy said. Nor did it have enough conventional weapons to equip reserve brigades, which might be deployed to push the Russians out.

 

“No one is accusing anyone,” he said. “We are where we are. We are fighting, and we are at war, and not at the beginning. That’s why we need to find a way out of the situation every day.”

 

Zelenskiy noted that western countries at peace had “different priorities” and, understandably, did not share Ukraine’s sense of existential urgency. This meant that “dialogue” rather than action could be frustrating.

 

“For us, time is our life,” he said. “If you don’t go down in a minute [to a bomb shelter] you can be dead. Therefore the attitude to time is completely different.”

 

He said Russia was “moving faster” than the west in terms of making and supplying weapons for its armed forces. Zelenskiy likened Ukraine to a ship – “not a sinking one” – that had to get to its destination “fairly” and in one piece, saving “as many lives as possible”.

 

He spoke, too, about the emotional and personal toll the war was taking on the people of his country. “You don’t know what war is until it comes to your house, to your street, to a friend of yours, to someone you studied with or to someone you love,” he said. “Until you have this, the war is somewhere afar.”

 

During his one-hour interview with the Guardian, Zelenskiy appeared relaxed and positive despite the bleak military situation and a gruelling schedule that saw him visit four EU countries this week. He described Johnson as a “good friend” who “really helped Ukraine”. Asked if he missed the former prime minister, Zelenskiy joked: “He does not give me the opportunity to miss him. He is always here.”

 

Zelenskiy said he had used Johnson as an “instrument” to reach Trump, after Republicans in Congress spent six months obstructing aid to Ukraine. Johnson had a productive “conversation” with Trump, Zelenskiy said. It was one of several initiatives to get through to Republicans, including to the House speaker, Mike Johnson.

 

On Britain, Zelenskiy said good relations would continue, whatever the result of the 4 July general election. “He [Keir Starmer] is a good guy … Rishi is also a good guy,” he said.

 

“It seems to me that the policy of Great Britain has never changed in relation to Ukraine. And it seems to me so important, because the leaders can be changed in different countries, but the most important is to never change the values … We will be working with the choice of the British people, with the prime minister who will be elected by the people of Britain.”

 

With no end to the war in sight, Zelenskiy said negotiations with Russia were unrealistic. He said a peace deal would be a “trap” since Putin would violate any agreement and “could not be believed”.

 

Russia’s president launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 because the west had responded weakly to his annexation of Crimea and takeover of parts of eastern Ukraine in 2014, Zelenskiy said.

 

Russia insists Ukraine has to accept new territorial realities. Zelenskiy said Moscow would exploit any pause in the fighting to “strengthen its muscles on the battlefield” and would strike again, sooner or later. He said the conflict in Ukraine was similar to the second world war, though on a smaller scale, because of the “ideology of Russian fascism”. Putin’s brutal “methodology” was the same as in Nazi Germany, he stated. It featured “mass executions, burials and rapes”.

 

Russian soldiers even used the “same routes” as Hitler’s army in their campaign to overrun Kyiv and to dominate the country, he said. If Russia won in Ukraine, Putin would seek to further reshape the boundaries of Europe by attacking other nations, , Zelenskiy said. “This is the real third world war.” He emphasised: “I don’t think Putin is crazy. He’s dangerous. It’s much scarier. You see, he will not stop.”

 

Zelenskiy revealed he reads books about 20th-century history, a few pages before bed, that explore the “mentalities” of cold war figures, such as Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin, and relations between the two superpowers, plus Cuba.

 

There is little prospect that Europe’s biggest war since 1945 will end soon. Zelenskiy was elected in 2019. Elections that were due to take place this month have been postponed because of the conflict. Did he, at the age of 46, have the stamina to carry on? Zelenskiy said that when he became president he promised to be with the people “until the end” and to defend the constitution. It would therefore be unfair to show any weakness, he said.

 

“I just don’t have the right. It is not worthy of me. And then you are a liar. I definitely wouldn’t want to be a liar, especially for my children.”